Peter Hopkins
American Fine Arts
Peter Hopkins’ recent show consists of six paintings, two photographs, two steel tables, and framed stats of typewritten formulas betraying the ingredients of the paintings. The formulas are based on Robert Smithson’s “Pulverizations” (although Smithson is not credited within the show), and Hopkins has substituted his own ingredients for the formulas’ variables. These include water from runoff pipes, varnish (blue), effluence, cherry Coca-Cola, sludge, Clorox, oil (motor/used), Ty-D-Bol, root beer, power-plant discharge, transmission fluids, and East River water.
The paintings, called Covered